


Her Very Own Arizona Dirtbag

by goldensteps



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: AU, F/F, Fluff, coming to terms with ur sexuality i guess?, i mean kinda, like nothing graphic or detailed but u know they fuckin, mentions of sex lmao
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-09-29
Packaged: 2019-07-18 22:54:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16128419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/goldensteps/pseuds/goldensteps
Summary: Eleanor quickly becomes well known on campus as both the girl who can keg stand longer than any delta-gamma-whatever-frat-douche, and also for a name synonymous with a good time, despite being as stingy as fuck with her weed. She’s scarily adept at handling her liquor, but when pretty straight girls lean in and slur into her neck about how they “always wanted to experiment,” she pretends not to be.aka tahani n eleanor bein hella gay throughout the years and also finding eachother. drabble drabble shameless fluff u kno.





	Her Very Own Arizona Dirtbag

**Author's Note:**

> (hi timeline might be a lil weird bc im Lazy but not like, distractingly so?)

Eleanor’s nine and watching The Karate Kid at a sleepover. All her friends keep gushing about how pretty Daniel LaRusso is, and Eleanor stares at him and just doesn’t get it. She feels a weird, dignified sense of pride at being the only girl in the fourth grade who isn’t boy crazy, but something nags at her. Because try as she might, she can’t make herself think any of those losers are cute.

**\- o -**

Tahani is eleven and waiting in the ice cream line after class. The girl behind her says “Ani, you have such lovely hair,” and plays with it, starting at the top and running her hand all the way down. She gathers it up, fingertips brushing against Tahani’s neck, and begins gently adding little braids. and Tahani almost freaks out, almost pulls away, because usually she doesn’t like for anyone to touch her, but the girl has red hair and pretty green eyes and reads bigger books than anyone else in their boarding school, and all of the sudden Tahani feels her usual fifth grade bravado replaced with nerves and goosebumps. She stares at the ground trying not to blush, and squeaks out a “thank you,” smoothing her rumpled uniform self-consciously.

**\- o -**

Eleanor’s thirteen and at summer camp, some good ol classic cabins-and-bonfires nonsense that a particularly involved school counselor set up for her. If anyone asks, she’ll wheedle about how sweaty and bored she is, but part of her is relieved to not be spending yet another summer in a shitty arizona double wide, watching the real housewives and hiding from her mom’s drunken boyfriends. 

She’s in the dining hall eyeing the weird mystery meat lunch and dipping her roll into mashed potatoes when an older girl from drama class plops down next to her and smiles. “Perks of being a vegetarian,” she winks, and Eleanor grins and laughs and elbows her in the ribs, maybe a little too hard. The thing is, she’s almost a little obsessed with her? This girl is loud and fun to be around, and so unapologetically herself. Always clad in Green Day t-shirts and thick eyeliner, and the kind of careless attitude Eleanor wishes she had. She has a habit of throwing her head back and laughing at Eleanor’s jokes, completely unreserved. Her laugh bubbles up out of her like a melody, like the most natural sound in the world. This girl laughs like birds sing, or like racoons fight.

Eleanor realizes she’s staring and covers up with a joke about the lunch monitor’s caterpillar unibrow, and privately wonders how this new friend’s plump lips would feel on her own.

**\- o -**

Tahani is fifteen and newly informed on what the word “bisexual” means, thanks Google. And it feels like it fits. She spends all day in the computer room with the door locked, searching “girlfriends, girls kissing, cute girl couples,” and getting warm giggly feelings in her stomach.

That night after dinner she straightens her spine, clenches her jaw, and strides into her mother’s study. It’s 2007 and still hard to talk about these things but Freddie Mercury was a family friend, Elton John sang at her parents anniversary dinner, and Sir Ian McKellen had tea with them just last week. So she feels like it might be okay. It has to be okay. She lingers in the doorway and takes a deep breath

“Do you have something to say to me, Tahani?” Manisha says briskly, not even deigning to look up from her book. All business, all the time.

“No. Well, yes. Uh-” Tahani clears her throat and shakes her hair out of her face, ignores the fear flooding her stomach, and says “Mother. I think I like girls.”

Manisha looks up then. Fixes her with a piercing stare that Tahani can’t quite read, and gives her a once over. Tahani’s heart is in her throat, She does her best to look mature and refined and certain.

“No. No you don’t,” her mother says, breaking the silence with a dismissive note of finality. Tahani swallows the lump in her throat. “Go put on a face mask dear, you’re looking a bit dry.” She nods and leaves the room, staring at the floor, ignoring the way her eyes sting. That’s the end of that conversation.

**\- o -**

Eleanor’s eighteen and in college and has absolutely no intention of joining a sorority, but rush week means booze and parties and the opportunity to fuck with people, so there she is. She quickly becomes well known on campus as both the girl who can keg stand longer than any delta-gamma-whatever-frat-douche, and also for a name synonymous with a good time, despite being as stingy as fuck with her weed. She’s scarily adept at handling her liquor, but when pretty straight girls lean in and slur into her neck about how they “always wanted to experiment,” she pretends not to be.

**\- o -**

Tahani is a grown woman capable of making mature and adult decisions, a hostess whose party planning skills put Martha Stewart to shame, an attractive socialite pined after by millions of men, so she doesn’t understand why one tiny little blonde-haired arizona dirtbag can make her more flustered than her good friend Taylor at the 2009 VMAs with only a genuine smile and the offer of a pull-out sofa. She swallows hard and mutters something about how finding her own place would probably be best, kicking herself internally for sounding like a snob. But those blue eyes keep sparkling at her, and that warm look leaves her with goosebumps for the rest of the day.

**\- o -**

Eleanor hates rich people on principle alone, but for some reason she can’t even be disgusted with herself for falling for this hot fraud. And fallen she has. Every time that stupid giraffe blinks her big brown eyes at her, every time their fingers brush over coffee, Eleanor’s stomach dips faster than when she crashed a bachelorette party by riding the mechanical bull and vomiting on the bride-to-be. This woman has hair that smells like tahitian vanilla and sunlight, lips that taste like mint and strawberry chapstick, and, as Eleanor discovers a few weeks later, a way of moaning that sounds like every good song ever written but better. She spent all of highschool swearing she’d punch anyone who called her “Ellie” in the nards and/or tit, but when it’s being whimpered in between Tahani’s breathy gasps, she can’t imagine wanting to be called anything else.

**\- o -**

When Tahani pictured “home” she always imagined the extravagant mansions she grew up in, with lush, gorgeous landscaping and at least one (1) movie room. She never envisioned a shabby, one bedroom apartment who’s only “landscaping” is the hanging ferns she tends to on the balcony, and the potted cacti that line her bedroom window. But when she returns after a long day to her flannel-and-sweatpants clad girlfriend, who stands on her tiptoes to kiss her and wrap her arms around her neck, who grins and says “hey hot stuff, I made chili for dinner,” when she gets to spend evenings in grey sweatpants that her parents wouldn’t ever approve of, hair tossed into a messy bun, binging the bachelorette and watching the her soulmates eyelashes flutter shut, when she gets to fall asleep every night curled around another person, her very own Arizona dirtbag, she knows that this place, more than anywhere else, is where she’s meant to be.

**Author's Note:**

> yooo thank u so much for reading! wrote this exactly one hour after finishing the new episode lmao. heres to kicking writers block in the nards!!! but ya lets be real pair chidi up w simone and let ellie n tahani bone @nbc pls n thanks. 
> 
> thank u so so much for reading my bullshit! as always, comments or kudos will make my Whole Entire Day and also i will love u eternally <3 <3


End file.
